living in my memory/living in my mouth
Wei Wuxian dies at twenty-two and doesn’t come back. Lan Wangji dies in an “unfortunate accident” in a temple in Yunping at thirty-seven. The world moves on.
Thousands of years later, Wei Ying and Lan Zhan have a senior thesis in cultivation to co-write on the Yiling Patriarch. It doesn’t go exactly how they were expecting.-“I still do not understand why you were able to read the journal in the first place,” Lan Zhan says.
Wei Ying grins. “You’ll laugh,” he says. He won’t, of course. Lan Zhan doesn’t laugh. But maybe he can swing a smile. “It’s because of the name thing. He wrote his name into the scrambling talisman. So it says that no one can undo the lock but Wei Ying.” He hooks a thumb at himself.
Everyone’s always said his name is unlucky. This is the first time it’s worked out in his favor. It’s not a coincidence either; apparently his mother thought it would be funny. Mrs. Yu had told him that with a curl in her lip, as if it didn’t make him wish he knew his parents even more.